Traditional operation of a locomotive starts with a train engineer or a conductor. Sitting in a cab section of a locomotive, the engineer runs the operation of the train. The engineer will manually input commands into the control unit of the locomotive so that the train may speed up, slow down, or brake. Although this set up works well for short trips, longer trips can be exhausting and tedious for the engineer to be ever vigilant, or to perform tasks adjusting the locomotive systems over a long period of time.
Throughout the journey, the engineer is responsible for monitoring and maintaining operation of the train. During its journey the train may report to the engineer or others on board specific information regarding train operations. This information may include health and operation of the engines of the locomotive, health of the train braking system, current cargo associated with the train, fuel levels, as well as distance and expected travel time to the next stop.
Some of this information may be useful to the engineer or others aboard the train at a given time, and during other times that information may be irrelevant. For example, the current cargo supply of the train may be an important notification to the engineer when the train has entered or departed a predetermined stop location. However, during travel between locations, this information may be irrelevant in comparison to other concerns the engineer may have. During travel between locations, the engineer may be more concerned with the operational health of the train and train systems as opposed to the actual cargo transported by the train. Providing a notification system to the operator of a train would be beneficial if such a notification system would allow the operator to view and receive information pertinent during the multiple stages of the journey.
Previous efforts have been made to produce a notification system for a user dependent on a current location. As seen in U.S. Pat. No. 8,755,824, a notification may be presented to a user when the user enters a designated geo-fence area. The geo-fence area is a bounded geographical area determined by a series of geographical coordinates obtained by the global positioning system. In this situation, a user may enter a geo-fence area and receive “cluster” of multiple points of interest. Instead of multiple geo-fences of each point of interest within, this disclosed geo-fence system employs a general cluster boundary which when entered by a user would notify the user of all points of interest within the cluster boundary.
Although this situation may work for a new visitor in a foreign city, it is not applicable to the specific nature and important detail needed in the transportation of goods. Any type of geo-fence system used within the transportation industry must meet the specificity of controlling inventory as well as addressing the individual needs of each geo-fenced area. Therefore, it would be advantageous, to develop a notification system for the transportation of goods and services which would report the needed specificity of the transportation field when a vehicle enters a particular geo-fenced region, while removing unnecessary notifications not pertinent to the particular geo-fenced region.